The young Telemachus was not slow to wrath nor vengeance.  From babyhood he had interrupted his play in order to “work” in the reception room near to the hatrack by the door.  And the poor professor on his departure would find his hat crown dented in or its nap roughened up, or he would sally home innocently carrying spitballs on the skirts of his overcoat.

Now the boy contented himself with simply ignoring the existence of the family friend, passing in front of him without recognizing him and only greeting him when his mother ordered him to do so.

The day in which he brought the news of the return of the ship without its captain, Don Pedro made a longer visit than usual.  Cinto shed two tears upon the lace, but had to stop weeping, vanquished by the good sense of her counselor.

“Why weep and get your mind overwrought with so many suppositions without foundation?...  What you ought to do, my daughter, is to call in this Toni who is mate of the vessel; he must know all about it....  Perhaps he may tell you the truth.”

Esteban was told to hunt him up the following day, and he quickly noticed Toni’s extreme disquietude upon learning that Dona Cinta wished to talk with him.  The mate left the boat in lugubrious silence as though he were being taken away to mortal torment:  then he began to hum loudly, an indication that he was in deep thought.

The young Telemachus was not able to be present at the interview but he hung around the closed door and succeeded in hearing a few loud words which slipped through the cracks.  His mother was speaking with greater frequency.  Toni was reiterating in a dull voice the same excuse:—­“I don’t know.  The captain will come at any moment....”  But when the mate found himself outside the house, his wrath broke out against himself, against his cursed character that did not know how to lie, against all women bad and good.  He believed he had said too much.  That lady had the skill of a judge in getting words out of him.

That night, at the supper hour, the mother scarcely opened her mouth.  Her fingers communicated a nervous trembling to the plates and forks, and she looked at her son with tragic commiseration as though she foresaw terrible troubles about to burst upon his head.  She opposed a desperate silence to Esteban’s questions and finally exclaimed: 

“Your father is deserting us!...  Your father has forgotten us!...”

And she left the dining-room to hide her overflowing tears.

The boy slept rather restlessly, but he slept.  The admiration which he always felt for his father and a certain solidarity with the strong examples of his sex made him take little account of these complaints.  Matters for women!  His mother just didn’t know how to be the wife of an extraordinary man like Captain Ferragut.  He who was really a man, in spite of his few years, was going to intervene in this affair in order to show up the truth.